AMST 140YReligion in American Life and Thought

3 credits · American Studies · Penn State

The course aims to cast light on contemporary religious life in the United States by looking at the history of American religion. The course will provide students with a broad overview of American religious life from the colonial era to the present, focusing on the diversity and vitality of American religious traditions, as well as areas of intersection and conflict around race, ethnicity, gender, class, and sexuality. The course will also ask students to consider how aspects of these histories continue to shape religious belief, practice, and public discourse in contemporary life. Students will consider important religious and philosophical writings, as well a popular/mass cultural, ethnographic, or other documentary sources that shed light on both the intellectual and lived history of religious life and thought in the United States.